Oscar Picks and Preferences 2021

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

 

The Oscars this year mirror the strangeness of the rest of life under the pandemic. For the first time, most of us watched original films meant for theaters on streaming channels. I haven’t been in a movie theater in over a year and the only film classes I have attended have been on Zoom. However, the way we watched these stories did not diminish the accomplishments of the filmmakers. Here are my picks and preferences in some of the major categories”

 

Best Picture:

 

I can’t say I have a strong favorite out of the eight movies nominated. I am surprised that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One Night in Miami, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday were not included in this list since they contained compelling stories and exceptional acting. These films, along with the nominated Judas and the Black Messiah show the ongoing struggle for racial justice. The Father was powerful and depressing in the way it put the audience in the mind of a man succumbing to dementia. A similar effective technique occurs in Sound of Metal as we experience the main character’s loss of his hearing after being a rock music drummer. 

 

Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7 take place during the period when I was attending college, so they touch me personally and I believe it’s important to expose these historical events and people to younger generations. Judas is interesting because it shows two different African American lives from the perspectives of a civil rights activist and Black Panther leader and a FBI agent. Chicago 7 adds personal details to the journalistic record and fleshes out those involved in the trial. Mank does the same with the man responsible for writing what some say is the best American film ever made, Citizen Kane. It also does an admirable job evoking Hollywood during the Depression era. 

 

Minari is a great mixture of humor and hardship as it focuses on the conflicts and unity of a Korean family trying to find the American Dream on a farm in Arkansas in the early 1980’s. The title refers to a Korean plant that the grandmother grows, suggesting something taken from another culture and being added to the diversity of the United States, hoping the transplant will flourish. 

 

Promising Young Woman is a dark revenge film about a damaged woman who goes to extreme lengths to punish men who victimize women. It has several surprising and effective twists in the script and the ending is an emotional gut punch. I’m not saying too much here because this film can’t be appreciated unless it is seen, and if you are a sensitive type, it is not for you. It is satisfying to me because of my intolerance and anger toward those who abuse women. 

 

Nomadland is a road movie that is very different from others in the genre. In simple, elegant fashion, it brings us into a subculture of Americans who either left their homes voluntarily or due to circumstances beyond their control. Many do not put down roots in one spot but instead link up with others and then continue on their separate journeys. It highlights the American desire for individual freedom and self-sufficiency. 

 

Nomadland has won the Producers Guild award and the Golden Globe, and so it is the favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar. I have no qualms with that choice, but the film that sticks with me the most is Promising Young Woman.

 

Pick: Nomadland 

Preference: Promising Young Woman

 

Best Actress:

 

Frances McDormand won her two Oscars playing strong, verbal women. In Nomadland she shifts gears and provides a moving, minimalist portrait of Fern, someone who leaves her town because her husband dies and the factory where she works closes. So, because of economic circumstances she buys a van and travels, looking for work. She eventually chooses this nomadic life instead of a stationary one. Her name suggests that she can grow just about anywhere, and yet a plant usually needs to put down roots. Like the plant in Minari, we also have here a symbol that suggests the drive to survive.

 

Viola Davis is powerful as the title character in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She provides a portrait of the African American blues singer who, even in the 1920’s, refuses to be dominated by her white manager and producer as she battles for control over her music at a recording studio. She can be manipulative, even with her Black musicians, and is possessive of her girlfriend.

 

Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman draws the audience into her nightmare as a traumatized woman who loses her infant during childbirth. There is an intense scene, that the movie does not shy away from, showing how childbirth can be an agonizing event for a woman. Her mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, has brought her daughter up to place blame on others for the bad things that happen in life, and pushes for suing the midwife. In that way, Kirby’s Martha can reposition the responsibility her mother placed on her for the child’s death onto the midwife. Martha grows during this story to someone who moves toward being a person of understanding and forgiveness, as she exonerates the midwife concerning the child’s death, and she eventually becomes a happy mother later.

 

Carey Mulligan gives the best performance of her career in Promising Young Woman. Her character, Cassandra, can appear vulnerable while actually being cold and calculating. She is cynical about any man rising above the urge to exploit women sexually, and yet gives one fellow a chance at romance, only to find her faith betrayed. Her pain is palpable when she thinks about her best friend being raped. The attack caused such anguish in Cassie’s life that she left medical school and has turned into a sexual vigilante, humiliating and exposing male abusers. In the end, she makes the ultimate sacrifice to avenge her friend’s rapists.

 

It’s difficult to believe that singer Andra Day makes her debut as an actress in The United States vs. Billie Holiday. She is the movie and inhabits the role. Along with Viola Davis’s Ma Rainey, we have another African American singer who becomes famous for her talent while she fights the white society that threatens her. Like Judas and the Black Messiah, there is a conflicted Black federal agent here also. In this case, he is torn between loving Billie and doing his job. Day gives a raw and powerful portrayal of Holiday’s singing and the drug addiction that resulted from her being tormented whenever she sang the song, “Strange Fruit,” which attacked the lynching of Black Americans.

 

Great performances here, but Andra Day’s Billie Holiday rises above the rest.

 

Pick: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday

Preference: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday

 

Best Actor:

 Riz Ahmed is Ruben in Sound of Metal, and he shows the ironic torment of going through the Beethoven experience, a musician losing his hearing. He shows us Ruben suffering, but also in the end, finding a sense of peace with his acquired deafness. In Minari, Steven Yeun (I became a fan when he was in The Walking Dead) presents us with a driven immigrant who despite all hardships wishes to become a productive part of the American experience. However, for me, the performances that excel are those of Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and Chadwick Boseman. 

 

In Mank, Oldman’s portrayal of Herman Mankiewicz is an indelible depiction of the writer who wise-cracks his sarcasm in his dealings with the repressive powerful forces who have relinquished their morality. His bitterness turns him into a self-destructive alcoholic who still produced one of the most memorable film scripts ever written.

 

In The Father, Hopkins shows a subtle ability to seamlessly shift gears as he moves between having fun, to being suspicious and also fearful as his character’s dementia-damaged mind travels through different time periods and interchanges characters. It is a believable and scary portrayal.

 

Chadwick Boseman’s Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is like an exposed nerve that reacts to all types of external stimulation. He holds nothing back when it comes to his personal torments and grievances, and his desire to be recognized for his musical abilities. He is like a catalyst who gets his fellow musicians to reveal their truths.

 

I did not realize what a central role Boseman had in Ma Rainey until I saw the film. As I watched I thought that his performance was worthy of an Oscar. I still feel that way. He will join Peter Finch and Heath Ledger as a posthumous recipient.

 

Pick: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Preference: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

 

Best Supporting Actress:

 

Maria Bakalova is daring, given what she had to go through in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She was also very funny. Previous Oscar winner Olivia Colman plays the caring and anguished daughter in The Father. Amanda Seyfried, in Mank, is Marion Davies, the comic actress who is the mistress of morally bankrupt William Randolph Hearst. Seyfried adds lightness and amusement to this otherwise dismal period piece. Glenn Close is a sort of gritty but supportive grandmother that is almost a redneck caricature in Hillbilly Elegy, an uneven work that tries to present nostalgia for a dysfunctional family. Another grandmother, played by Yuh-Jung Youn, is not stereotypical at all, in Minari. She is surprisingly nonconformist in her language and playfulness, while also demonstrating fragility as the Korean family matriarch. 

 

Glen Close has been passed over for the Oscar in the past and she took the Golden Globe for this portrayal. I think she will win. But, SAG winner Youn I believe is the more deserving choice.

 

Pick: Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy

Preference: Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari

 

Best supporting Actor:

 

Paul Raci is Joe, the supportive but firm leader of a community that helps those who are deaf adapt to their new lives. Leslie Odom, Jr., in One Night in Miami, plays singer Sam Cooke, the successful singer in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, who wrestles with how he can use his fame to advance the cause of African Americans in the United States. Sacha Baron Cohen plays activist Abbie Hoffman, one of the defendants in The Trial of the Chicago 7. Cohen’s performance dominates the movie as he accurately mirrors Hoffman’s intelligence, outrageous humor, and verbal delivery. Lakeith Stanfield is Bill O’Neal, the Judas in Judas and the Black Messiah, a coerced FBI undercover agent used to spy on Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago in the late 1960’s. He becomes a tortured individual as his loyalties become divided. The Messiah in this film is Fred Hampton, played by Daniel Kaluuya (who worked with Stanfield in Get Out). Kaluuya is charismatic as one of the Black Panther leaders who is a dynamic speaker. He can be diplomatic in reaching out to local street gangs and was instrumental in creating community outreach programs. He is depicted as a martyr who is assassinated by law enforcement officers.

 

I would not be displeased if Sacha Baron Cohen won here, since I truly enjoyed his portrayal of Abbie Hoffman. But, Daniel Kaluuya’s depiction of Fred Hampton is mesmerizing. He won the Golden Globe and SAG awards. 

 

Pick: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah

Preference: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah

 

Best Director:

 

I actually feel that the best directors were not nominated. I thought Regina King did a great job of revealing the different characters in One Night in Miami. She unobtrusively “opens up” the story enough so claustrophobia doesn’t take hold in the motel room where Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, and NFL star Jim Brown fictitiously get together. Also, Florian Zeller does a great job of arranging the scenes in The Father to place us right in the middle of the mental storm the character of Anthony is trying to weather.

 

That’s not to say that Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung, Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell, Mank’s David Fincher, Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao, and Another Round’s Thomas Vinterberg didn’t do great jobs. Zhao offers us a beautiful and revealing canvas on which to paint her moving portraits. She won the Golden Globe and the Directors Guild awards.

 

Pick: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland

Preference: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland

 

Best Original Screenplay:

 

I thought Mank would be nominated here since it has some excellent dialogue. Although Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7 are not based on previously written works, they did have the historical records to rely upon. Minari and Sound of Metal create intriguing and developed characters. But, Promising Young Woman, written by Emerald Fennell, is darkly smart and humorous, and it pulls no punches. The Screenwriters Guild awarded Fennel its award, and justly so.

 

Pick: Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman

Preference: Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman

 

Best Adapted Screenplay:

 

It’s difficult to believe that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is not among the choices here, given that the late August Wilson is partially credited for the script based on his great play. That would be my pick, given its rich characters and dialogue. Nomadland and The White Tiger are based on books, and The Father and One Night in Miami are adapted from plays. Although only based on the character of Borat from the first movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is considered an adaptation. It is the most original in this category, and it is often sharply satirical. It received the Screenwriters Guild award.

 

Pick: Sacha Baron Cohen and a whole bunch of other people for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

Preference: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

 

Editing:

 

Nomadland beautifully pieces together numerous images of the United States and those that roam it.  Promising Young Woman presents scenes that ramp up the tension as the audience joins the main character on her vengeful quest. Sound of Metal has shots that reveal the frustration, anger, and eventually the acceptance of its deaf protagonist. The Trial of the Chicago 7 successfully joins courtroom action with chaos on the streets during the Democratic National Convention in 1968. It received the Editor’s Guild award in this category. However, I believe the crafting together of Anthony’s various states of mind in The Father make it the best entry here.

 

Pick: Alan Baumgarten, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Preference: Yorgos Lamprinos, The Father

The next film to be analyzed is The Grifters.